Ukraine’s war focus of EU ministers

RIGA – European Union foreign ministers met for a second day in the Latvian capital, Riga, on March 7 for talks focusing on the war in eastern Ukraine. The gathering of ministers from the EU’s 28 member states came amid heightened tensions between the EU and Russia over Moscow’s support for separatists in Ukraine. Implementation of the Minsk ceasefire agreements brokered in September of last year and February of this year were high on the Riga agenda. On March 6, Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov and German Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier agreed in a telephone conference on the need for the European security organization, the OSCE, to double the number of its monitors in Ukraine to 1,000. Kyiv and the West accuse Russia of deploying troops and weaponry in Ukraine’s east to the support the separatists. Despite daily evidence supporting the allegations, Moscow denies sending Russian troops or weaponry into eastern Ukraine. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Agence France-Presse, the Associate Press and Reuters)